Soviets Get Hard-Hitting News on New TV Program

Soviet television Sunday unveiled a new weekly news program featuring frank coverage of once-sensitive Soviet subjects, live debates and commentary by prominent specialists.

The broadcast, entitled Seven Days, was hosted by Soviet television’s chief news editor, Eduard Sagalayev, in a relaxed but hard-hitting style--a far cry from the nightly news program Vremya’s stiff, traditional news anchors.

“Every person has the right to know the real state of things and to consciously draw conclusions about them,” Sagalayev said in his introduction to the broadcast.

Items featured included a much fuller account of the week’s events in East Germany than had been previously shown on state television, with young Berliners dancing on the Berlin Wall to celebrate the ending of travel restrictions to the West.

Viewers saw for the first time a full report on last Tuesday’s unofficial march through Moscow in counterpart to celebrations in Red Square to mark the 72nd anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution.

Also featured was a debate on the current coal miners’ strike in the Arctic Vorkuta coal field, including miners’ and management representatives.

One young miner denied Sagalayev’s suggestion that the strikers were “trying to bring the government to his knees.”

There was also footage of the Nov. 7 parade in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, where soldiers went through with their parade with only a handful of civilians in sight.

The program lasted 80 minutes, twice as long as the nightly version and also offered a report on last Friday’s disturbances in the southwestern republic of Moldavia that injured 180 people.